


flora and fauna

by perculious



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 05:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perculious/pseuds/perculious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry looked at Ron, squinting a little past a smudge on his glasses lens from the rim of the glass. “Ron,” he said. “Listen. I’m not kissing Luna Lovegood when she’s showing me her floogle bears.”</p>
<p>“She’s showing you her what?” Ron said, looking alarmed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	flora and fauna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inklesspen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inklesspen/gifts).



“So Hermione asked him what his name was, and it was _Creevey_ —can you believe it?” Ron slapped the bar, and let out a loud laugh. “It was a miniature one, like, they’re still out there multiplying. A neverending supply of Creeveys.”

“You’re joking,” Harry said.

“Nah, mate, it’s true. Would I lie to you?”

Harry checked his watch. He still preferred one that was made from real clockwork. Some things were hard to give up. It was eleven PM, and the unreal quality of the watch's ticking and the way the bar counter seemed to be gently swaying indicated that perhaps he should turn down the next cider.

"You got plans tomorrow?" Ron was saying. Harry glanced at him—he was tracing his finger around the rim of his glass.

"Might go over to Luna's," Harry said. "She sent me a note about some new plant she's raising."

"Hrmm," Ron said, making a noise in his throat like a weedwhacker. He took another long draught of his drink, and wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. "What, three times in a week?"

Harry shrugged. For two people who'd been through a war together, their conversations tended toward the insubstantial. Opening the lid to sincere conversation was a trickier thing when the Pandora's box was full of family deaths, so weekend drinking nights intentionally stayed far on the other side of maudlin. So even just the careful tone in Ron’s voice was a flashing signal; honestly, it reeked of Hermione.

“Mate, you know I try to stay out of it,” Ron said, “but, uhhh, doesn’t Ginny mind you going over to Luna’s so much?”

“What?” Harry blurted, reeling back a little. “No, of course not.”

“Hrmm,” Ron throat-growled again, and Harry knocked his side with his elbow.

“Come on,” he said. “It’s Luna Lovegood. We’ve all been friends for ages. And Ginny’s not jealous, can you see her wasting away at home if she thought something was up?”

“Nah,” Ron said. “That’s why I haven’t asked you before, because your bones seem surprisingly unbroken for someone who’d be two-timing my sister. But...” He trailed off, leaving it open for Harry to fill in the blank with unsavory accusations. From the flamingo hue of his cheeks, implying this much seemed to be too much for him already.

Harry looked at Ron, squinting a little past a smudge on his glasses lens from the rim of the glass. “Ron,” he said. “Listen. I’m not kissing Luna Lovegood when she’s showing me her floogle bears.”

“She’s showing you her what?” Ron said, looking alarmed.

“It’s some kind of magical aquatic creature,” Harry muttered. They hadn’t looked like much to him except dust suspended in water. He had suggested she might have gotten them confused with sea monkeys, but she’d insisted they had the ability to heighten divinatory powers.

“Okay, Harry,” Ron said. The look on his face still suggested that Harry was a few bubbles short of a butterbeer. “Does Ginny know Luna’s been showing you her floogly whatsits?”

“Floogle bears,” Harry said, “and yes, I told her about it. You don’t have to worry about my relationship, Ron, alright?”

Ron snorted. “It just sounds like the kind of thing that would be in one of Hermione’s romance novels,” he said. “ _The great wizard Runevance opened her corset, revealing her heaving floogle bears_ —”

“Wow, you know a lot about romance novels, Ron,” Harry said loudly, just to shut him up.

-

“See the unique heliotrope shade of the leaf veins?” Luna said, stroking the plant’s leaf with her index finger as gently as if it were a kitten. “That’s what sets it apart from common moly herb. I couldn’t believe it when I found it, I had to check it against at least three field guides.” She rapped her knuckles on a book lying on the table with her plants, so old that the corners of the cover were bent and worn through to the cardboard.

The plant looked like it was glowing from the inside. It didn’t look like something that should be found in nature, which was probably why it was a magical plant.

Luna’s place was always noisy with the sheer amount of stuff packed into it. The crystals and amulets hanging from the ceiling stirred and clinked against each other like wind chimes, and there were usually at least a few animals in cages or terrariums lined up against the wall. Right now it was a couple old tortoises in a glass tank and a cage with a rat scrabbling around in its bedding. Luna’s owl Daphne cooed from the windowsill, preening herself with her beak. When Luna moved around her work room, she toed stacks of books to the side and crunched parchment under her feet.

“Neat,” Harry says. “What’s it do?”

“Exactly what moly herb does, but more so,” Luna said in an even tone. “Tea?”

“Please.” Luna took his hand and led him on a weaving path through the detritus to get to her kitchen. Her hand was soft and cool in his, although it was warm inside her house. Luna’s kitchen was not much less cluttered than her work room, with bunches of herbs hanging to dry from several ceiling beams and dishes, both used and clean, covering the counters. There was something refreshing about being in a space that was so resolutely lived in. If Harry’s boots tracked a little mud into Luna’s house, it would just look like a new element of decor.

Harry sat down, leaning his elbows on the table and watching Luna mess around with the kettle. Harry was one hundred percent sure that what he said to Ron was accurate, at least for him—he had no interest in Luna, although he’d been coming here increasingly often—but something about it was bugging him anyway. Harry wasn’t always the best at reading Luna—Hermione would say he wasn’t the best at reading anyone—so what if he was misreading the situation? He could still feel the sense memory of Luna’s cool fingers wrapped around his hand.

Luna handed him a mug, and he wrapped both hands around it, condensed steam dampening his palms. She sat down across from him and they sipped their tea in silence. Luna never pressured Harry to talk, or even asked him about his life at all. It was what attracted him to this place to begin with. And that wasn’t a slam at Ginny, he thought, with a stab of guilty loyalty—Ginny was his partner, and she had not just the right but also the responsibility to know what was going on with him. But it felt like he needed a refuge in his life too. Different people, different roles.

“Erm,” he said, feeling a prickle of discomfort in the back of his throat. He didn’t want to bring this up, but—these things were important, and once you were committed to someone you couldn’t go around pretending they weren’t. “Luna. Er.”

“Yes, Harry?” she said, blinking up at him with her wide, limpid eyes. He was briefly bolstered by noting his complete lack of sexual interest in her; Luna was pretty, but he could only notice it as an abstract, not in any visceral sense.

“Uh, well,” he said. “I just want to—well, I just—look, Luna, this isn’t anything romantic, right?”

He thought she might laugh, but instead she just kept staring at him, with the same unnerving calm with which she could tell him that whatever new creature she was looking for held the secrets to the universe.

“What do you think?” she said.

“What do I think?” Harry repeated. “About—about this being romantic?” Panic was starting to throb faintly at his temples. “Uh, well—no, I don’t think it is. I’m—you know—you know my—”

“I agree,” Luna said, disarming him. Oh. The tension gathering in his head eased a little. “So what do you think it is?”

Friendship? Was that the right answer? Harry was unwilling to start telling Luna the things he privately thought—that being here made him feel like the walls around him had opened up so he could breathe a little, or that getting her little notes inviting him over was akin to a warming sip of firewhiskey at the end of a long week. He was also unwilling to say anything that would disappoint her, whatever she was looking for here.

“I just like coming here,” he said finally, feeling dense.

“I like it when you do,” she said. She blew on her tea, and took a careful sip. “So that’s that. Do you want to go out looking for raskovnik after this?”

“Yeah,” Harry said, feeling the pressure loosen. He sat back in his chair, listening to Daphne’s beak click and the herb bunches rustle. “That’d be nice.” There was a breeze coming through the cracked-open kitchen window, and he could hear the sound of the kettle steaming as it cooled. He listened to the noise of Luna’s home, closed his eyes, and sipped his tea.


End file.
